Chapter 4 - THE POISONED BARGAIN
The room spun. Skylar gripped the edge of the mahogany desk to keep from collapsing.
“I… I didn’t know,” Skylar choked out, tears finally spilling over her lashes, stinging the fresh stitches on her cheek. “I’ve been sending my entire paycheck to the collections agency every week. I thought I was keeping him alive.”
Dominic studied her. His life in the underworld had trained him to spot a liar at fifty paces. He saw the raw, unadulterated devastation in the woman standing before him.
“They diverted your payments,” Dominic said, his voice dangerously calm. He tapped the paper. “Bianca bought the debt to own you, but she let you keep paying a dummy corporation so you wouldn’t know. She used your father’s life as a leash.”
“But why me?” Skylar cried. “I’m a maid! I don’t know anything about your business.”
“Because you are close to my mother,” Dominic realized, the pieces snapping together in his brilliant mind. “Bianca needed someone inside the house to monitor Carmela. Someone desperate enough to keep quiet.”
“I never spied for her!” Skylar said, her voice rising in panic. “I swear on my father’s life, Mr. Rossi. I never told her a word!”
“I know,” Dominic said softly.
The absolute certainty in his voice caught Skylar off guard. She looked up.
“If you were on her payroll,” Dominic continued, walking slowly around the desk, “she wouldn’t have hit you tonight. You protected my mother because it was the right thing to do. Bianca realized she couldn’t control you.”
Before Dominic could say more, a soft, tentative knock sounded at the study door.
Dominic frowned. He hadn’t given anyone permission to interrupt. He walked to the door and pulled it open.
Standing in the hallway was a small boy in dinosaur pajamas. He had dark, curly hair and wide, terrified brown eyes. He was clutching a piece of drawing paper to his chest.
“Leo,” Dominic sighed softly.
Leo was Dominic’s six-year-old nephew. His parents—Dominic’s sister and brother-in-law—had died in a car accident two years ago. Leo hadn’t spoken a single word since the funeral.
The boy ignored his uncle. He scurried past Dominic’s towering frame and ran straight to Skylar.
He grabbed the fabric of her skirt, burying his face in her apron.
“Hey, buddy,” Skylar whispered, dropping to her knees despite the shooting pain in her face. She wrapped her arms around the boy. He was shaking.
Dominic watched, stunned. Leo rarely let anyone touch him.
Leo pulled back from the hug and held up the piece of paper he had been clutching. He shoved it into Skylar’s hands.
Skylar looked at the drawing in crayon.
It was a picture of the estate’s glass greenhouse. Inside, a stick figure of an old woman was trapped. Outside the door, another stick figure with long yellow hair—Bianca—was holding a giant padlock.
At the bottom of the page, Leo had drawn a broken thermometer.
Skylar’s breath hitched. She looked up at Dominic.
“Mr. Rossi,” she whispered. “Last month… the night I found your mother wandering outside in the freezing cold… she wasn’t wandering.”
Dominic stepped closer, taking the drawing from Skylar’s hand.
“Bianca locked her out there,” Skylar breathed. “She tried to make her freeze to death and make it look like dementia.”
A dark, terrifying shadow crossed Dominic’s face. The mafia boss Skylar had always heard whispers about had finally awakened.
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from the front foyer, followed by the sound of breaking glass and a man’s shout.
May you like
Dominic’s radio, clipped to his belt, crackled to life.
“Boss,” Marcus’s voice shouted through the static, accompanied by the sound of a struggle. “We have a problem. The Morettis are here. All of them.”
